Pretoria’s State Theatre comes out big guns blazing in 2015 as they present a programme which promises good things for the new year.
Josias Moleele and Tony Goroge revisit one of the first productions to place them on the dramatic radar, Call Me Crazy, written and directed by Moleele.
This was first done when the two fledgling actors were still studying at TUT and it will be fascinating to see what the years of acting and directing wisdom does to this intriguing comedy which opens in the Momentum Theatre from Thursday to February 1.
Playing metaphorically, it tells of a disillusioned construction worker, Oompie, whose mission is to tar all the world’s roads.
Music is the queen of all things with Joseph Clark and his band opening with Music of Queen – The Show Must Go On in the Drama from February 5 to 15 before they travel to the Netherlands the next month.
Clark has long been one of our foremost interpreters of Queen’s music and the show features a stunning band (including stepson Peach van Pletzen on drums) and wife Elzette Maarschalk as director.
Tobie Cronjé, Hanna Grobler, Andre Lotter and Luan Jacobs return in Vettie Vettie to the Drama Theatre (it previously played at Montecasino’s Pieter Toerien Theatre) from April 1 to 26, but it’s no April Fool’s joke as this hugely popular farce has already done the rounds in Joburg and Cape Town. Also travelling from Joburg, The Mother of All Eating (from May 4 to 31 in the Arena) is written by Zakes Mda and directed by Makhaola Siyanda Ndebele with a new slant on this classic work.
Another South African work follows from last year’s National Arts Festival, Fishers of Hope, written and directed by Lara Foot, returning for the first time in many years to her old stomping ground.
Running at the Arena from May 4 to 31, the work is subtitled Taweret, after the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility. She views it as a modern African myth set in a hazy twilight zone at the edge of a lake divorced from our own reality.
As with anything Foot touches, the approach is new as she works in familiar territory, but with new eyes and a cast that’s exciting and vibrant.
John Kani brings his latest work Missing to the Drama from June 1 to 28. It is directed by Janice Honeyman and stars Susan Danford as Kani’s Swedish wife, Anna Ohlson, newcomer Buhle Ngaba as their daughter, Ayanda, a medical student with Apollo Ntshoko as Peter Tshabalala, a young comrade and Robert’s assistant in the ANC office in Stockholm.
It’s a fascinating work, grappling with our past, present and future and well worth watching with the great Kani writing and playing the lead character.
Anyone who knows theatre will realise that to ignore the dynamic creativity of Smal Ndaba and Phyllis Klotz, co-founders of the Sibikwa Arts, would simply be foolish.
Uhambo, The Journey (Arena from July 1 to August 2) tells the bitter-sweet story of a young boy, Mzano, growing up in South Africa during the 1950s. Uhambo, which is a revival of an earlier work, is accompanied by music, dance and dialogue, atmospherically capturing the essence of South Africa during that time.
Turning heads to more recent historic events, Aubrey Sekhabi’s Marikana The Musical is also back in the Drama from July 20 to August 16, featuring the same sterling cast including Aubrey Pooe, Meshack Mavuso and Emma Mmekwa.
The cast and team promise to continue to heal, educate, mourn and, most importantly, do justice to the art and the story.
Another revival is Shwele Bawo (Momentum from August 3 to 30), which looks at the juxtaposition of old traditions fighting for survival against modern ways in South Africa and the effect this has on society.
Playwright, actress and director, Motshabi Tyelele, is as well known for her belief in the need for the empowerment and cultural enrichment of our youth and society as she is for her theatrical and television work.
Those who saw the English production of Blackbird by Scottish playwright David Harrower will remember its powerful content.
This time, it will be a South African production starring the wondrous Lionel Newton (Momentum, September 1 to 27) telling the story of a young woman meeting a middle-aged man 15 years after having a sexual relationship, when she was 12.
It’s intriguing stuff with paedophilia such a big focus these past few years.
An appearance by Jay Pather at the State Theatre is quite something. His Qaphela Caesar at the Arene from October 12 to 31 is an interdisciplinary contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and described as a complex site-specific work based in a world of power struggles and politics.
Shake-speare’s classic text has been reworked by Pather to examine corruption and political power from a modern African perspective as it explores betrayal, prophecy, the power of political structures and the position of the individual within it.
This if followed in the Arena from November 6 to December 5 by the exciting Neil Coppen’s Newfound Land that focuses on the intertwining lives and dreams of two South African men – Jacques: an Afrikaans anaesthetist based in a Pietermaritzburg community hospital and Sizwe: a choreographer and student at UKZN who has received a calling (ukuthwasa) from his ancestors to become a sangoma.
Coppen’s play has been described as a hallucinatory and unusual exploration of sexuality, love and loneliness in contemporary South Africa, and asks the question: is forgetting a way of healing or an ultimate form of denial?